Râșnov Citadel

Râșnov is worth pairing with Bran precisely because it is the opposite kind of building. Bran was a fortification with a garrison. Râșnov was a refuge: a walled enclosure on a hill that the villagers below moved into — with their animals and their food — and lived in until a siege passed.

That is why the inside is not a castle plan but a street plan. There are house plots, a school, a chapel. People stayed long enough to need them.

It is first mentioned in a document of 1331, and its origin is attributed to the Teutonic Knights, who were in this corner of Transylvania in the early 13th century; the Saxon community afterwards enlarged it into what survives.

The well

The story attached to the deep well in the middle is that two Ottoman prisoners were set to dig it through rock on a promise of freedom, and that it took them seventeen years. It is a legend, told as one — but the well is real, and a refuge on a hilltop with no water is a refuge that falls in a week, which is the part worth taking seriously.